Kobe Boštjan

Boštjan Kobe received his BSc degree in chemistry at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and his PhD degree in biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, USA. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at St. Vincent’s Institute in Melbourne, Australia, where he also started his own laboratory at the end of 1997. In 2000, he moved to the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He has been awarded by the 2001 Minister’s Prize for Achievement in Life Sciences, an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship in 2005 and Laureate Fellowship in 2018, the 2009 ASBMB (Australian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) Roche Medal, the 2018 ASBMB Beckman Coulter Discovery Award and became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2018 and Slovenian Ambassador of Science in 2020. He was the President of the Society of Crystallographers in Australia and New Zealand (2012-2014). He is Editor of Acta Crystallographica Section D Structural Biology. His laboratory focuses on applying structural biology approaches to understanding infection and immunity.

Research projects: Dr. Kobe’s research interests are in protein structure and function, with the emphasis on understanding the structural basis of intra- and intermolecular interactions formed by these macromolecules. The primary techniques used in the laboratory are cryogenic electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography, combined with a plethora of other molecular biology, biophysical and computational techniques. His current projects focus on proteins involved in innate immunity signalling in humans, plants and bacteria, for example the Toll-like receptors pathways in humans and plant NLRs (nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat receptors).